Best GPU for Hackintosh used for video editing

[andrai886]

Hi guys,

Maybe this is a noob question but I would like to hear your recommendations for the best GPU for Hackintosh that will be used for video editing in Final Cut Pro X.

The system runs a Core i9-9900k with 64GB of RAM.

Thanks

 

[jaymonkey]

Maybe this is a noob question but I would like to hear your recommendations for the best GPU for Hackintosh that will be used for video editing in Final Cut Pro X.

@andrai886,

Best GPU for FCPX in MacOs Mojave and Catalina ... in order of cost/performance :-

1. AMD Radeon VII (2nd Gen Vega GPU)
2. AMD Vega 64
3. AMD Vega 56
4. AMD Radeon RX 580/590

Sapphire branded cards are recommended by Apple but most 3rd party OEM cards will work as long as your running MacOS Mojave 10.14.5 or later, once you find something check these forms for the specific card just to make sure.

Radeon VII is a fantastic card and is basically the same GPU used in the new MacPro, however production of them was quite limited so it's almost impossible to find one in stock these days ... if you can find one second hand at a price you can afford then that would give you the best FCPX performance right now.

The Vega 56 & 64 GPU's have been superseded with the release of the AMD 5700 series GPU's but are still top performers for FCPX, you can either buy used or try and find a suppler who sill has stock, look out for some good offers on them come Black Friday/Cyber Monday. I bought a used Sapphire Vega 64 Liquid Cooled card just over a year ago and can say that it's been one of the best buys i've ever made ... great FCPX performance, cool, quiet and very stable.

Radeon RX 580/590 is a good all round card for MacOS/FCPX but lacks the raw processing/compute power of the others.

The new Radeon 5700 series cards are also worth considering (MacOS Catalina only) and come in between the Vega 56 and Vega 64 in terms of FCPX performance but driver support is still in its early phase right now and prone to a few issues, support should get better in the coming months once we get a few more releases of Catalina updates.

Cheers
Jay

 

[andrai886]

@andrai886,

Best GPU for FCPX in MacOs Mojave and Catalina ... in order of cost/performance :-

1. AMD Radeon VII (2nd Gen Vega GPU)
2. AMD Vega 64
3. AMD Vega 56
4. AMD Radeon RX 580/590

Cheers
Jay

Thank you for the amazing answer. I was thinking about Radeon VII too but I can’t find it anywhere. Also, I might find an used one but not from Sapphire But as I understand, as long as I am using 10.14.5 or later it should work fine.

@jaymonkey What do you think about using 2 x Sapphire 5700XT. Will MacOS kniw how to handle both? The price of both is aprox. equal with the price of one VII.

 

[iLikeHackintosh]

Radeon VII too but I can’t find it anywhere

It's hard to find Radeon VII, but not impossible. You just have to daily watch Amazon etc offers and grab it, when it will become available. Took almost a month for me to get new one.

 

[jaymonkey]

What do you think about using 2 x Sapphire 5700XT. Will MacOS kniw how to handle both? The price of both is aprox. equal with the price of one VII.

@andrai886,

Really not sure about that ..... like i said 5700 support in MacOS is still very early and there are a few problems, those drivers should mature with one or two Catalina updates.

As for running two 5700's in a system ... if it worked it could give very good performance but again i'm not sure, i don't recall reading about anyone so far trying it ...

Cheers
Jay

 

[jaymonkey]

Are these also excellent with premiere pro cc 2020 or do you recommend me others? I have to change the video card because cc 2020 stop supports on the CUDA.

Adobe CC 2020 Apps are now Metal 2 API optimized ..
Initial testing seem to indicate that performance is very good and in some cases better than CUDA on similar spec'd GPU's.

The same list of GPU's for FCPX in Post #2 would apply to Adobe 2020 as that too is now Metal optimized.

Cheers
Jay

 

[Gigamaxx]

Are these also excellent with premiere pro cc 2020 or do you recommend me others? I have to change the video card because cc 2020 stop cuda supports

The 5700xt runs pretty close to the VII. I recently saw a comparison of several apps and benches that put it very close. I would wait on buying two of them because the Navi 12 cards are rumored to be coming soon. If they increase the shaders or CUs it will then be able to compete or beat the VII in most cases. Navi21 is also in the Catalina code and that should be a monster but probably won’t pop until next year.

 

[jaymonkey]

The 5700xt runs pretty close to the VII. I recently saw a comparison of several apps and benches that put it very close.

@Gigamaxx,

When it comes to heavy duty compute performance the Radeon VII will always beat the RX 5700 XT hands down due to its higher number of compute units (60 vs 40 on 5700 XT), in addition it has 16GB of HBM2 memory at 4 Gbps with a 4096 bit memory interface giving it a max bandwidth of 1024 GB per second. AMD claim a Peak Single Precision Compute Performance of 13.8 TFLOPs.

RX 5700 XT uses 8GB of GDDR6 memory at 14gbps with a 256 Bit memory interface giving it a max bandwidth of 448 GB per second. It makes up some ground against the Radeon VII due to the efficiency of its new RDNA architecture. AMD claim a Peak Single Precision Compute Performance of 9.75 TFLOPs.

The numbers speak for themselves ... Radeon VII is around 41% more powerful than 5700 XT in Peak Single Precision Compute Performance.

Of course it depends on the task at hand and how well optimised the application being used is, but as long as the host system is able to push the data to the Radeon VII fast enough it will leave a 5700 XT in it's tracks. it's a beast of a GPU when it comes to raw compute performance.

Not saying that the 5700 XT is a poor card quite the opposite in fact, for it's price it punches well above anything else at that price point but if your looking for sheer compute performance on MacOS then the Radeon VII is still king (for the moment).

Once Apple get the 5700 series drivers stable and optimised I think a 5700 will become the new goto GPU for 95% of hackintosh systems .. only heavy duty 4K/8K video editing or very complex 3D work will need anything more powerful.

I'm not taking into account gaming performance as that something i personally don't do so can't really comment on it.

As you say it will be very interesting to see what AMD has been up to when it releases Navi21 & Navi23 next year, they could be absolute beasts ... I suspect that we'll see the them released first as an add in card for the new Mac pro giving it even more compute power (at a even higher cost) ...

Cheers
Jay

 

[andrai886]

One last question from me. I’ve found a XFX AMD Radeon VII 16GB HBM2, 1750 MHz Boost, 1801 MHz Peak, 3xDP 1xHDMI Pci-E 3.0 in stock. Will this work on my Hackintos?

 

[Gigamaxx]

Are these also excellent with premiere pro cc 2020 or do you recommend me others? I have to change the video card because cc 2020 stop cuda supports

The 5700xt runs pretty close to the VII. I recently saw a comparison of several apps and benches that put it very close. I would wait on buying two of them because the Navi 12 cards are rumored to be coming soon. If they increase the shaders or CUs it will then be able to compete or beat the VII in most cases. Navi21 is also in the Catalina code any that should be a monster but probably won’t pop until next year.

@Gigamaxx,

When it comes to heavy duty compute performance the Radeon VII will always beat the RX 5700 XT hands down due to its higher number of compute units (60 vs 40 on 5700 XT), in addition it has 16GB of HBM2 memory that has a 4096 bit memory interface giving it a max bandwidth of 1024 GB per second resulting in a Peak Single Precision Compute Performance of 13.8 TFLOPs.

RX 5700 XT uses 8GB of GDDR6 memory with a 256 Bit memory interface giving it a max bandwidth of 448 BG per second. It makes up some ground against the Radeon VII due to the efficiency of its new RDNA architecture coming in at a Peak Single Precision Compute Performance of 9.75 TFLOPs.

The numbers speak for themselves ... Radeon VII is around 41% more powerful than 5700 XT in Peak Single Precision Compute Performance.

Of course it depends on the task at hand and how well optimised the application being used is, but as long as the host system is able to push the data to the Radeon VII fast enough it will leave a 5700 XT in it's tracks. it's a beast of a GPU when it comes to raw compute performance.

Not saying that the 5700 XT is a poor card quite the opposite in fact, for it's price it punches well above anything else at that price point but if your looking for sheer compute performance on MacOS then the Radeon VII is still king (for the moment).

Once Apple get the 5700 series drivers stable and optimised I think a 5700 will become the new goto GPU for 95% of hackintosh systems .. only heavy duty 4K/8K video editing or very complex 3D work will need anything more powerful.

I'm not taking into account gaming performance as that something i personally don't do so can't really comment on it.

As you say it will be very interesting to see what AMD has been up to when it releases Navi21 & Navi23 next year, they could be absolute beasts ... I suspect that we'll see the them released first as an add in card for the new Mac pro giving it even more compute power (at a even higher cost) ...

Cheers
Jay

The tests I saw were 5700xt, VII, and RX 580. There was a power consumption, performance and price comparison. The 5700 XT was very close to the VII especially when considering it’s handicap of memory and lower price. The 580 was not too far behind and wins the value prize. The 5700XT beat the 580 and was shown to use less power. The VII is a power hog.

The VII is the most powerful for MacOS Mojave and up but that should change with the 5800, 5900 models.